Tiger Woods gives NBC massive ratings boost for Valspar

The ratings for the Valspar Championship released Monday showed the final round featuring Tiger Woods challenging for the lead drew the largest TV audience for any non-Masters event since the 2015 PGA Championship.

The final round drew a 5.11 rating Sunday in overnight, metered markets.

It was also the highest network TV audience for a non-major since the 2013 Players Championship, which was won by Woods.

The final round coverage on NBC was up 28 percent vs the final round of the 2015 Wyndham Championship (4.0) – the last time Woods contended on a Sunday.

The pre-network coverage on Golf Channel earned a 1.65 rating, which was that network’s highest-rated lead-in telecast ever.

NBC Sports drew a record 3.26 overnight rating Saturday for its coverage of the third round. That was the best-rated Round 3 of a PGA Tour event on any broadcast network since 2006, and the best rating for the Valspar tournament ever. Viewership increased 181 percent over the same round last year.

The increase in digital audience for NBC was massive. Golf Channel and NBC Sports Digital saw a 612 percent increase in minutes streamed vs. last year on Saturday and 27.2 million minutes streamed for the tournament.